Workwear Production Output Improved by Cold Air Guns

Company Overview Recently we had the opportunity to work with a well-known manufacturer of men’s and women’s clothing, boots, and accessories, famous for their high quality, rugged workwear. The manufacturer was using one of our older Cold Air Guns to cool the double needle in a banding machine that was sewing Cordura fabric. The Cold Air Gun keeps the needles cool, preventing the looper thread from burning in two.

The Challenge The same manufactured noticed another fabric-related problem where a Cold Air Gun would be a beneficial solution. When fabric to make a belt loop comes off the fusing machine, it needs to be cooled before moving to the next stage of production. To finish the process, the material for the belt loop is folded over narrow adhesive tape and sewn together. The material is then sewn into long 250-300 ft. strips, after which the material enters a heater for approximately 60 seconds. As the material is heated, it fuses to stiffen and strengthen. When the fused belt loop exits the heater, it’s nearly 150°F and has to cool before moving to the next stage of production.

Discover How Cold Air Guns Use Argon Gas in Aerospace Application

Customer Overview An aerospace parts manufacturer, for a major player in the aerospace industry, fabricates and welds stainless-steel and Inconel to produce a variety of parts for the airframes and engines used on commercial jets. The aerospace manufacturer was having difficulty producing acceptable prototype parts for a project that they were bidding on. If they could not produce a quality prototype in time, they were going to lose the bid and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Challenge This particular stainless-steel part was being TIG welded using argon for the shielding gas. The shielding gas was used not only for the weld gun but also supplied to a fixture to 'bathe' the internal sections of the part in the inert gas. This was meant to keep the back side of the weld clean and free of carbon. During the welding operation, the thin stainless-steel was warping slightly, causing some dimensions to go out of tolerance.

The warping of the stainless-steel part was due to the heat input and welding speed not being kept within the appropriate parameters (this may vary depending on the type and size of the part). Any attempts to speed up this process can cause distortion and warping. The only way to truly avoid warping is to apply slow, cool air onto the product. This is where we came in.

Wrapping It Up: Vortex Air Gun Aids in Aerospace Applications

Company Overview The global corporation MAG offers a comprehensive line of equipment and technologies serving a wide range of industries including aerospace, automotive and truck, heavy equipment, oil and gas, rail, solar energy, wind turbine production and general machining. Their services include process development, automated assembly, turning, milling, automotive powertrain production, composites processing, maintenance, automation and software development. The company has facilities in the Americas, Asia and Europe. The headquarters for MAG Americas is located in Erlanger, KY and they have five main production facilities in North America, including one located in Hebron, KY, which is the center of excellence for composites technology.

The Challenge Milo Vaniglia is Senior Project Engineer at the Hebron facility where he directs mechanical design of new products. Vaniglia's team developed the company's VIPER® Fiber Placement Systems (FPS). This composite fiber placement machine combines the advantages of tape laying and filament winding with advanced computer control and software. The fiber-reinforced graphite composite parts the VIPER® produces offers significant advantages over metal for the aerospace industry. Essentially, the VIPER® provides an effective method to make graphite/epoxy one-piece structures for aerospace applications.

The VIPER® machines have seven separate axes of motion, making them particularly suited to highly contoured structures such as cowls, ducts, fuselage sections, pressure tanks, nozzle cones, tapered casings, fan blades, spars and "C" channels. In developing this innovative system, Vaniglia realized that a cooling component was essential to prevent the tow or ribbon of composite tape from adhering to itself prior to placement, thus guaranteeing wrinkle-free, near net shape lay-up. In providing its high-profile aerospace customers with this technology, MAG demands excellence of all the components used in the VIPER® FPS. Vaniglia needed an air products company capable of meeting this challenge.

Cooling Large Industrial Parts in 60 Seconds

This was the challenge faced by Anderson Machine Manufacturing, a Richmond, VA-based company which builds custom machines for a broad spectrum of industries and applications. In 2009, one of their clients, a multi national corporation, sought Anderson Machine’s aid in creating a machine to compress and cool the components of an industrial-size gear box shaft. The client wanted extremely rapid cooling, so top of the line air equipment was a necessity. Since the components of the machine had to remain dry, mist cooling was not an option. Todd Anderson, Vice President and Mechanical Engineer at Anderson Machine, explains that “as a mechanical engineer, you know to do what you’re good at and find the best experts you can for other areas. We knew that in this case, meeting the client’s requirements meant finding an extremely high level of expertise in air technology.” After learning about Vortec online, Anderson explained the machine his client sought. Vortec engineers analyzed the specifications Anderson provided and developed a solution. “Building as many different machines as we do, I deal with a lot of different vendors,” Anderson states. “With Vortec, they hit the ground running, grasping our needs right away instead of needing to have things explained to them twice. We told them how big the assembly was, what materials were involved and the timeframe. They performed the heat load calculations to determine which products would work, then sent a spreadsheet showing the products with the right cooling capacity.” By using four of Vortec’s model 610 Cold Air Guns, Anderson was able to deliver a machine which cooled the equipment quickly, meeting the client’s requirements. Vortec’s engineers realized that, although the Cold Air Guns effectively cooled smaller equipment, a two-stage cooling process was necessary to bring down the temperature of the larger, denser equipment. They suggested that Anderson retrofit the machine, adding a preliminary cooling phase. Vortec also recommended shifting to the larger, more powerful model 630 Cold Air Guns rather than the smaller model 610’s which were originally used. The 2-part cooling cycle necessary for the larger equipment involves using Vortec Curtain Transvector Air Knives to remove most of the heat, taking the temperatures of equipment from 350 to 150 degrees F. The Curtain Transvectors use compressed air, amplifying the air flow to rapidly dissipate heat by bringing more airflow (cubic feet perminute) to bear on the equipment. Curtain Transvector air knives bring more than three times the cooling capacity of standard nozzles. During this initial stage, machine operators can stop the process and take infrared temperature readings. In the second stage of the cooling process, four of Vortec’s Cold Air Guns model 630 cool the equipment, lowering the temperatures from 150 degrees F to under 110 degrees. The combination of the model 630 Cold Air Guns and Model 921 Curtain Transvector air knives bring the temperature of the large gear equipment down from 350 degrees to 100 degrees F in less than a minute. “I give Vortec high marks,” Todd Anderson states. “When we presented them with an increased level of challenge based on our client’s new specs, they didn’t blink. The Vortec crew really has their heads screwed on right as far as interfacing with clients. And in addition to great products and an excellent understanding of technology, they also offer a very reasonable price.”